Star Trek Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 28 - Breakdowns by Star Trek

Author:Star Trek
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780743474566
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2003-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter

4

“I need to get out of here.”

Sonya declared this to her parents and Belinda over breakfast one morning—the first meal she had eaten with them since her arrival.

“Is the food that bad?” her father asked with a wry smile.

“No, of course not, but—”

Her mother, wrinkles softening the same sharp cheekbones she had passed on to her daughters, gazed at her daughter with the family’s hazel eyes. “What is it, mija?”

“I need to go to Portland. To see Kieran’s mother—and his grave. I know he wanted to be buried next to his father, and—” She hesitated. “I don’t know why, I just need to go.”

José Esteban put a large hand over his daughter’s small one. His hair, as jet-black as it was when he was a boy, a fact of which he was inordinately proud, fell down over his eyes, which Sonya had always thought made him look like a very dark sheepdog. “Then you need to go.”

Her mother asked, “You want us to come with you?”

Sonya started to say no, then thought about it. “Let me ask Ms. Duffy tomorrow when I contact her. I don’t want to drop in unannounced.”

“Good thing,” her mother said. “I raised you better than that.”

Belinda smiled. “You did? I must’ve missed that part.”

“Mostly, yes.” Lupe Gomez fixed her daughter with a look.

Sonya wondered if she were missing something here. “Is everything okay?”

“Nothing you need to worry about, mija,” Belinda said with a glower at their mother.

“Okay.” Sonya looked at her father, who had brushed the hair away from his eyes, so there was no mistaking what the message was behind the look he gave her: Stay out of it. The relationship between Lupe and Belinda was akin to an old roller coaster, and it looked like it was about to hit one of its downward cycles after years of steady upward climbing.

“It’s not like there aren’t other openings for soccer coaches,” Belinda added, thus providing the reason for the latest difficulty. Bee’s gone and screwed up another career.

Her mother raised an eyebrow in an almost Vulcanlike manner. “Really? Even ones who’ve been fired three times for violating school policy?”

“It’s a dumb policy.”

Lupe stood up. “Just once, would it be too much to ask, just once, for you to stick to something? To make a decision and actually abide by it for more than five minutes, like your sister?”

Sonya flinched.

“Lupe, please,” her father said in the long-suffering tone that Sonya recognized from previous Belinda-mami fights, “don’t drag Sonya into this.”

“Why not, it’s her favorite trump card to play,” Belinda said, also standing up. “Sonya’s the perfect daughter who does everything right. Except she doesn’t always.”

Shooting a look at Belinda, Sonya said, “Bee, what’re you—?”

“Maybe if she’d actually told that guy yes when he proposed, he wouldn’t have accepted a suicide mission.”

Her voice barely a whisper, Sonya said, “That’s not how it happened.”

“That’s how it looks to me, Ess. You didn’t say yes, so he didn’t have anything to live for. How’s that for little Commander Perfect, huh? So don’t go telling me that I’m the failure in this house.

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